Protecting critical reporting through a staff transition

Overview

Status: Continuity phase delivered. Modernization continues.

A key staff transition put essential reporting knowledge at risk. Nashville CARES needed to preserve the processes behind its program and funder reporting while building a more sustainable data function. We combined reporting operations, knowledge capture, data expertise, and organizational support to stabilize the immediate work and develop the next phase.

What was at stake

Program and funder reporting depended on information spread across systems, spreadsheets, and one person’s institutional knowledge. The immediate need was to make the priority processes usable by the wider team while keeping the work moving through the transition.

How the work came together

Understand the obligations

Map priority grant metrics, definitions, deadlines, and the sources each report depends on.

Recover the working knowledge

Inventory systems and intermediate files, capture workflow steps, and identify owners, access needs, and refresh cadence.

Validate and share

Reproduce report outputs with staff, explain known differences, and publish a navigable continuity playbook.

Carry the work forward

Connect the stabilized processes to ongoing report production, data-platform development, and the transition to a sustainable data function.

What changed

Priority reporting processes became documented, validated with staff, navigable, and assigned to owners. An accessible continuity playbook brings source information, requirements, workflow steps, cadence, and known exceptions into a shared reference. That makes the knowledge easier to transfer through a repeatable process.

What makes a workflow transferable?

• Inputs: sources and definitions
• Owner: responsibility and access
• Cadence: when the work runs
• Validation: checks and exceptions
• Output: report and destination

Why the combination matters

Operational understanding identified the reporting obligations and responsibilities. Research and documentation made implicit knowledge explicit. Validation connected the written process to actual outputs. Engineering and organizational support then addressed the foundation and people needed to maintain it.

What the foundation makes possible

• Shared reporting knowledge. Priority workflows can be found and understood beyond the person who originally assembled them.
• Clear responsibility. Owners, cadence, sources, and exceptions give the team a practical basis for managing recurring work.
• A sustainable next phase. Documented requirements and validated workflows guide the platform and organizational transition.

The continuing engagement

The continuing engagement combines report production support, Microsoft Fabric and Power BI development, interim data leadership, support for the permanent data-leadership transition, and staff communication. Progress has included dashboard review, a consolidated reporting calendar, submitted reporting files, and workbook improvements. Broader modernization remains in progress.